


Learning Experience

by strikeyourcolors



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Superhero problems, eating your feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 17:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11833542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikeyourcolors/pseuds/strikeyourcolors
Summary: "Does it ever get easier?" Dick asks. Bruce isn't technically old enough to be his father biologically, but those deep blue eyes are looking at him as a child beseeching a parent. "Some nights I feel like I can't do this anymore, Bruce. I can't be Nightwing."The vigilante life has been particularly hard on Dick Grayson lately. He has to evaluate his life on several levels and the careful balance he's tried to keep is destroyed. At least he can always go home. And at least Bruce tries to understand.





	Learning Experience

**Author's Note:**

> Something short this time that I'm not entirely happy with, but figured needed to be posted before it became too irrelevant. This mentions happenings from "Rebirth" and has spoilers up until Issue #20 of Nightwing. I realize the comics went in a completely different direction with Dick and his problems but this is the meltdown I felt was inevitably coming sometime after that point.

Alfred is in bed and the alarm hasn't gone off, leaving precious few reasons why the light in the kitchen is still on when Bruce emerges from the cave in the pre-dawn hours after a patrol. Part of his nightly ritual lately has been checking to make certain the doors of the manor are locked; it's normal for home owners, so he thinks. Maybe not for homeowners with butlers but external vigilance applies even to his daily life as Bruce Wayne. 

The kitchen always has a light on. It's small, a nightlight really in case anyone in the house decides a post-patrol snack is in order. Often times Alfred is even still awake to serve them but considering Alfred will probably be awake again in another hour or two, it's a safe bet that he's already turned in. The light in the kitchen isn't that one. It's brighter, and it's filtered in such a way that Bruce knows the door is half closed. Fully closed and someone would be asking for privacy. Fully open and it would be considered inconsiderate to ignore. He pads nearly silently to the door and pushes it open the rest of the way.

Bruce doesn't really expect Dick to be sitting there. But he doesn't really not expect it, either. The list just keeps dwindling as to who arrives at the manor and what they're doing there. A bowl of cereal is in front of him at the kitchen table, along with the cartoonish box. Dick is in a pair of sweatpants he's almost certainly outgrown, judging from the length, and a t-shirt that Bruce swears is one of his own. Pilfered from his former bedroom, maybe, because Dick keeps clothes that fit him in the Cave and no one has been in the Cave tonight except Bruce, according to security feeds. 

He doesn't think of other people who could have been in the cave. He doesn't think of Robins who have flown the nest or been robbed from it. He focuses on practicalities first. "Is there a reason you're sitting in my kitchen at 4AM eating cocoa puffs?"

"It's chocolate Crocky Crunch," Dick responds. "In Alfred's kitchen. At 4:35 AM. Because I've lost control of my life." His tone is so dejected that it's almost comical, as is the look that he gives the chocolate cereal on the table as he hangs his head. Bruce knows better by now. A _clown blanc_ , Dick had said once as he tried to describe life at the circus. 

And Bruce knows. He knows that his own way of coping with an unspeakable tragedy had been to withdraw and rebel. Dick's way had been laughter. It had been a few months of having the newly orphaned Dick Grayson in his household before he realized it. The child who wanted vengeance also wanted to laugh. He smiled in a week more than Bruce had in a year. Broken legs or bad leads, Dick had smiled and made some kind of quip. Bruce had thought he simply coped remarkably well before Alfred pointed out that perhaps Dick didn't cope better than Bruce had, but differently. 

Each of his sons has been a learning experience. Looking at his eldest, Bruce is acutely familiar with the idea of him being a practice child. The one who started it all and set a precedent for the others. 

Bruce gets a coffee mug and fills it with water; it's far too late or early for actual coffee if he hopes to get any sleep at all. Still, he's found through the years that he's more likely to be approached if he's eating or drinking. It's like that act somehow makes him seem more human and opens him to conversation. "Why have you lost control of your life?"

Dick chews the mouthful of cereal. "It's just..." He sighs. "Everything," He admits at last. "It's everything," Dick repeats and Bruce can see this trickle of admission turning into a flood. "It's that my maybe pregnant girlfriend gets kidnapped for her connection to me by Professor Pyg who, by the way, also created something called a Deathwing that is like me except a combat zombie." And Bruce at least had access to most of that information in reports, but he can't stop his eyebrows from lifting at that descriptor of the girlfriend. "Don't," Dick snaps. "Lecture me on safe sex."

It hadn't been what Bruce originally was planning to do, so he assumes it's a joke. He also assumes that Dick is not going to become a father any time soon or else he feels like this would be more of an evening with alcohol than with cereal. Bruce also knows Dick runs home when he wants to be comforted; not when he wants to feel like an adult. That had taken a few fights to figure out. "You handled the situation well," He offers in consolation. "You overcame the threat."

Elegant fingers rake through Dick's dark hair and he shakes his head. "After seeing Damian nearly get stabbed to death. Knowing...knowing Tim is dead. And Jason is _somewhere_ and probably also in a terrifying amount of danger." Dick releases a breath. He stands up and Bruce thinks he might be ready to storm out of the kitchen but all he says is "Does Alfred still keep M &Ms? Or is there ice cream?"

"You'll make yourself sick," Bruce replies but Dick is already going for the freezer so he doesn't stop him. A lot of his life might be summed up in watching people do stupid things that will hurt them and not interfering because a malicious part of him thinks the lesson needs to be learned before it leads to something worse. "When have any of you balked at danger?" He asks instead, practically. "Especially the terrifying kind?"

Dick snorts and hauls out some espresso-flavored ice cream. He eats it straight off the ice cream scoop. "You're selling a whip to the lion tamer here, Bruce. I'm pretty sure I burned the majority of my calories in my teenage years being fucking terrified all the time. Probably the reason why Tim is so small..." He stops with the ice cream scoop halfway to his mouth and looks so stricken that Bruce feels like he's invaded something personal and intimate just by looking at his face. "Was. Was so small."

They sit in silence for a moment. It's not that Bruce hasn't come to terms with what happened to Tim. He knows what it is to lose a friend and a colleague and a teammate. He's suffered through losing his family and his son. Bruce also knows he's never lost a brother, never had one to lose, and that Dick shoulders that burden because he's the one who decided that Robins were brothers instead of orphans adopted into the same household. The Robin legacy is Dick's, and Bruce had been so proud to see him come into it, to try to guide the others. Jason's accused him, in wilder, angrier moments of wanting them all to die like that. Bruce hadn't argued but he knows that as proud as he is of Tim for being a hero, he also might never forgive him for dying as one. But Tim had made a choice, and Bruce was never going to call it right or wrong when he'd done crazier things with the odds stacked further against him and lived to tell the tale. 

"Does it ever get easier?" Dick asks. Bruce isn't technically old enough to be his father biologically, but those deep blue eyes are looking at him as a child beseeching a parent. "Some nights I feel like I can't do this anymore, Bruce. I can't be Nightwing."

When Batman had taken a Robin, he'd never stopped to consider what happened when Robin grew up. He'd assumed a little that, with his parents avenged, Dick would move on and lead a more normal life. Of course it hadn't happened. Of course the man who dressed as a bat-themed vigilante nearly every night for twenty or so years might think someone else was just as determined to put the wrongs to rights. "Some years it's easier," Bruce admits. "Some it's much, much harder. I could never give it up. But you? You don't have to be like me. You aren't me." None of them are, which had been another hard lesson. Especially with the blood tie with Damian. They're not him any more than he had become his father, or Alfred. "You could stop."

Dick laughs. It's sharp and bitter and it sounds ugly coming from his throat. "That's not just it though. I feel like I can't be Dick Grayson either. I can't be your son or Damian's brother or Shawn's boyfriend or Barbara's friend. I just want to crawl in bed after patrol and fall asleep and not wake up." 

That has Bruce's gaze shooting to him from where he'd been focusing on a chip at the edge of his coffee mug. He hasn't noticed any newly developed risky patterns to Nightwing's behaviors but...

"I'm not going to do anything," Dick tells him, cutting off those thoughts. He's slowly put the ice cream back into the freezer and he paces the kitchen like a beast in a cage. He doesn't have to elaborate what 'anything' might mean. "I mean. I'm not. I haven't thought about it any more than you have I'm sure. I don't want to _die_ I just want to not exist."

It strikes something deep in Bruce. He knows that feeling. Batman had given him purpose, had pulled him back from oblivion, but he hadn't been lying to Dick either when he told him some years were worse than others. "It's difficult," Bruce murmurs to him. "It's difficult to keep fighting when you feel all your actions are empty. Your rogues will be back on the streets. Your relationships will have to change and not always for the better."

"Fuck," Dick whispers again. He's swearing a lot; it's another indicator of the stress he's under. "You know I kind of hoped Shawn was pregnant? Because that would be an excuse to get out of this. An excuse to pack us up and get the hell out of here and forget I ever did it. But then when the tests were negative...that was a relief too. Because I'd almost wished a child into existing so it could fix my problems for me and that's not right." His fingers clench. He starts to tug on his own hair and Bruce swears he can hear the strands snapping out of his head. He gets to his feet, slowly easing toward Dick. Visible, patient movements are the way to approach any of them.

His fingers close around Dick's wrist, gently untangling fingers from his hair before he guides it away. Dick stares at him, dark blue eyes so raw and broken that Bruce hates it for him. He hates that of anything he could have given his son he's given him this shadow to hang over him. He uses Dick's wrist like a tether, pulls him against his chest and wraps his arms around him. 

Dick normally adores hugs. Physical affection is his catnip and there had been a point in time where if Bruce heard Damian screaming within the safe confines of the Manor he had simply assumed Dick had tried to touch him. But Dick stiffens briefly and then simply...stands there. There's a weak kind of reciprocation, but nothing else. Nothing he'd expect from a normally exuberant acrobat. 

"I feel empty," Dick confesses and Bruce thinks maybe the head pressed against his shoulder is there so Dick can hide his face. "Nothing I do matters and that feels so stupid because it does matter. Nothing is wrong and everything is wrong at the same time and I feel like I'm going crazy. I keep saying tomorrow will be better but I feel like I'm running out of tomorrows."

He wants to reassure him. To tell him he'll find his feet. He'll find the sky. But Bruce knows it's not a time for empty platitudes. Dick is suffering and it's from something that very few people in the world can help with. “Tomorrow might not be better,” He admits and Dick chokes, strangles on something that might be a laugh. “But there are days after that. And after those. If anyone can find himself again, Dick, it's you.” He has faith in his son, in this child. Dick knows he doesn't pay these compliments lightly. 

Dick takes another shuddering breath against him. Then he pulls back and Bruce lets him. Dick's jaw is set in that stubborn way he'd first noticed when the orphan in his care refused to take a step back from avenging his parents. He's determined. Driven. He won't be fine; Bruce isn't fine. But he'll go on because Dick doesn't know what it is to give up or to let go. “So cheerful,” Dick says and his voice wavers only slightly. “I'm going to steal a bottle of good booze from you and I'm going to go to my room, alright? I'll be out of your hair soon enough.”

Bruce shakes his head. “You don't have to rush off. Let me pick something for you though.” Dick prefers sweet, but he also tends to get sick with too high of a sugar content in his drinks. They had to throw out a rug Dick was sick all over as a teenager after drinking too much. It's funny, Bruce thinks, what he remembers about his children. Alcohol preferences rather than their first steps, for example. Something to evaluate later. For the time being he rests a hand on the top of Dick's head and pulls him in for an odd sort of kiss to his forehead that he's been trying to perfect for as long as he's had him. There's something endearing, something reassuring in never getting it quite right. Empires will fall and Bruce Wayne will not know how to platonically kiss Dick Grayson. 

“I'll take you up on picking it out,” Dick agrees. “But I need to get back. Responsibilities, you know?”

Bruce does. He's not sure if he's proud or sad that his children have to find out.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments, reviews, and random replies always appreciated. Want to see something written? Suggest it [here](https://strikeyourcolors.tumblr.com/ask)!


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